Day 50 - Raleigh, North Carolina to Ashland (Richmond), Virginia

As we were leaving the Raleigh museum yesterday afternoon we realized that there was much more to see. Regina, the helpful docent, had done much to fill out our knowledge on North Carolina. Still, we wanted more. We knew we needed to come back the next day. But where to park? I wasn't really comfortable parking in the residential neighborhoods, and it probably wasn't fair to the local residents since I took up two spots.

Then I had an inspiration. I asked a parking attendant who happened to on our route back to the rig if he, or the woman eating peanut butter dipped apples beside him, knew where a person might park a motor home in downtown Raleigh if they wanted to visit the state museum. They looked at each other a moment and then back at me and shook their heads.

Okay, I thought, this is nuts. A little further along, we saw another chap. This one was standing beside a fancy orange and white parking control golf cart. Realizing that if you don't ask, you don't get, we went over to talk to him. Turned out he was he was in charge of the parking lot where buses normally park when school children are transported to the museum. I asked him the same question. He looked thoughtful, but in the end he gave us the same answer as the two earlier attendants had given.

"Any way we could park here?" Concetta asked, sweeping her hand around the near empty bus lot.

He turned and surveyed lot and stroked his chin. "No," he said. "I can' let you park here." Then he appeared to get an idea. "just a minute," he said. "Let me talk to my boss."

A few minutes later he came back and said, "Okay, follow me."

He took us over to a vacant spot, about twenty feet by forty, tucked up beside the adjacent state office building. The spot was not meant for buses, but I suspect that in heavy traffic days, where there are too many buses for the available parking spaces, the attendant probably squeezed one or two in there. He pointed to the space. "I can let you park here," he said. "But you have to be here by 8:30 or 9:00 a.m., or you might not be able to get in with all the buses in the way."

"That sounds great," I said. "What's your name?"

"I'm Walter Hill," the man said, and we shook hands. "We'll be here, Walter, and we thank you very much."

Walter's smile stretched from ear to ear. "You're welcome," he said. "Happy to give you a hand."

And so it was that by 8:15 a.m. we had driven in from the Umstead State Park, backed the rig into position beside the building, left our business card under the wiper, and had gone off in search of some coffee. We managed to find a pretty upscale coffee shop a couple of blocks away, and had some very nice coffee and flaky croissants with apple butter. Then, since we still had a half hour or so before the museum opened, we visited the North Carolina State Capitol building (photo upper left). Though most state officials have moved into larger quarters and out of the Capitol, just as in Nevada, their Governor still occupies the 1840s-era building along with about twenty-five of his staff members.

Concetta reminded me to mention that three of our presidents came from North Carolina: James Knox Pope; Andrew Jackson; and Andrew Johnson (photo of their statues upper right).

The Raleigh museum is a very, very nice facility, and their staff, as I've related, is quite helpful and knowledgeable. We spent a very pleasurable couple of hours there this morning. We concentrated on early North Carolina history, including their problems with pirates, the slave trade, the Colonial period, and the Civil War era. Concetta zeroed in on a man who was giving a demonstration on the industry that revolved around pine resin. Pine resin has many different uses, a sealant, a glue, and varnish for a few. It is distilled into oil of turpentine, which is used as a solvent, and as a paint thinner. There are medicinal uses of pine resin, or pitch, as well. The docent, whose interest was in nautical uses, pointed out that the pine sap or resin was used extensively by the shipping industry and the military to seal the bottoms of ships.

I'm always amazed by the inventiveness of Americans. They can find uses for everything, and often turn those uses into a business.

The most interesting display today belonged to the man known as Carbine Williams, who, while in prison for a crime he may not have committed, more or less invented the light-duty carbine rifle known as the M1 that was used in WWII. According to Wikipedia, "Williams was found distilling illegal moonshine, and was held responsible for the death of a federal officer during a raid on his still. He was sentenced to thirty years hard labor. He cycled through the prison system, until a firm, but compassionate warden, H.T. Peoples allowed him to work in a prison tool shop. There he invented the gas system for his famous rifle, and eventually was released from prison in 1929 and worked with Winchester Firearms on development of the M1 Carbine" (his prison-made rifles shown in photo right).

When we got back to the parking lot, there was Walter standing guard over the RV. Everything was A-Okay. We took the photo (bottom right) and slipped him some cash for his lunch. We shook hands a half dozen more times, wished each other well, and we rolled out of the parking lot headed for the open road about 11:00 a.m. We wanted to get out of Raleigh before the lunch-time traffic picked up. It had been a grand morning and it was nice to have made a new friend.

The rest of the day we just motored up Interstate 95 and listened to our Robert Crais mystery on the disk player. We stopped for lunch on a semi-deserted side road, but kept to the schedule this time with nothing to distract us.

So we were able to get into camp early this afternoon, though I thought it was going to be iffy at first. Our destination was the KOA in Ashland, Virginia, which is just north of Richmond. When we arrived we discovered that the park was nearly full as Richmond was hosting some sort of NASCAR races. When I asked if we could stay two days the clerk said, "Well, no."

Okay then. We'll just have to find somewhere else. Tomorrow we're headed for the Civil War battlefield of Fredericksburg, Virginia, followed by Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, and then, if it's not too late, Appomattox Court House. Hopefully we'll find a camp over by Monticello to stay.

Only one bit of bad news which I discovered when I went to set up camp tonight. When I went to the rear of the coach to crank down the rear jacks, I discovered that when we left the bus parking lot this morning the dip leaving the lot was a bit too deep for us and one of the jacks was bent all to heck. So, this afternoon I had to remove it and somewhere along the way I'll have to find a guy with a torch to heat it up and bend it back so I can bolt it back on. Until then we'll just have to jiggle.